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Dessert

Composition Cake

A spiced raisin cake baked with butter, brown sugar, flour, eggs, spices, wine, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Composition Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, mace, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, alternating with the water.

  6. Fold in the raisins and wine until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two greased 2-quart loaf pans.

  2. Bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses content deepens the color and flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set and bind the cake together.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, alternating with the water. Adding dry ingredients and liquid in alternating portions helps the batter emulsify and stay smooth. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, egg, raisin, cinnamon, wine):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg, raisin, cinnamon, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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